Riviera Life Church

Non-conformist chapel, formerly known as Wesley Methodist Church, Torbay Christian Centre, and Elim Pentecostal Church. Built for the Wesleyan Methodist Church and dated by three foundation stones set under lower windows in the front gable wall, marked March 17, 1873. Designed in late 13th-century Gothic revival style.

The building is constructed in squared rubble with ashlar dressings and details. It has slate roofs with decorative tiled ridges, coped gables with finials, and weathered offset plinths. The principal feature is a two-stage tower that partly projects to the left of the main gabled front. The tower is surmounted by a broached octagonal belfrey stage, with octagonal pinnacles set on the broaches, carrying a tall octagonal ashlar spire. The spire has quoined angles and two bands in contrasting darker stone.

The main body comprises a wide six-bay nave with a chancel occupying one bay, flanked by side aisles below a clerestory. A timber gallery spans the first bay of the nave above a screened lobby. The lobby is entered from a porch in the lower stage of the tower at the end of the left-hand aisle and from a tall cross-gabled porch at the end of the right-hand aisle.

The tower's lower stage features diagonal buttresses with weathered offsets and an arched doorway to the porch above a flight of steps. The doorway has two inset arched orders carried on detached nook shafts with moulded caps and bases. A gablet with finial sits above the doorway arch, which has diapered spandrels. A pair of lancet windows sits to the side of the tower in the lower stage, and a triplet of graduated lancets appears in each exposed face of the second stage. Each of the major faces of the belfrey stage has a two-light lucarne with Y tracery beneath gablets set against the base of the spire.

The gable end wall contains a lower stage with a central arched two-light window with Y tracery and a single-light arched window on either side. The upper stage has a large six-light arched window with geometrical tracery and foiled lights under a hood mould. A roof light with a triangular head inset with foiled diamond tracery panel sits in the apex of the gable. To the right of the gable is a turret with an octagonal spirelet and an offset weathered buttress to the front.

The porch to the right has a tall two-light arched window with Y tracery on its side. The doorway to the cross-gabled porch is similar to the tower porch doorway but with only one order to the inset arch and nook shafts. An arched two-light window with Y tracery sits above it.

The side elevations feature an arched two-light window in each aisle bay and flat arched two-light clerestory windows above.

The interior contains nave arcades with octagonal cast-iron columns with moulded caps carrying moulded arches under a continuous running hood mould. The chancel arch has two orders: white marble jambs with figured black marble nook shafts to the outer order, with the inner order supported by short central shafts carried on stiff-leaf marble corbels. Timber roof trusses are partly exposed, with arched and diagonal braces to collars and principal rafters. The feet of the arched braces to each truss are supported on corbelled shafts with stiff-leaf capitals. Stiff-leaf corbels are set at the springings of the arcade. A boarded ceiling runs at the level of the collars and to the common rafters.

The chancel features a tall panelled dado. The central three bays contain a Gothic-style reredos with traceried panels and cornice. The aisles have timber dado with decorative capping and plastered walls above. A three-light window above the reredos in the chancel has geometrical tracery with stained glass in the lights.

The building stands close to Torquay Museum.